Bridgeport Rehab - or How To Lose Your Wife In 10 Days

[jmiller]

Ok, you can get a new MacBook for around $1,000 (or less), so you got all this for less than a grand???

No my wife is a professional photographer so she had to have the newest bestest thing. But i only paid $1700 for the mill. A few hundred more for a bunch of tooling and stock. And a few hundred in rentals for transporting. All in $2800

 

[woodchucker]

No my wife is a professional photographer so she had to have the newest bestest thing. But i only paid $1700 for the mill. A few hundred more for a bunch of tooling and stock. And a few hundred in rentals for transporting. All in $2800

I would get the bestest indicator.. forget the laptop.

 

[ChazzC]

You might get a MacPamphlet for that, but the price of laptops have been going through the roof.

I guess depends on the definition of "New:" to me, new is unused by others & current model, but not necessarily the latest available (like a new Pickup that is last years model:





You can spend more for more memory and larger displays, but IMHO a second separate display is less added cost and more useful and I am not having any issues running MacDraft Pro on my 2020 M1 MBA with 8 GB (which I bought new in January 2022).

 

[jmiller]

Of course the VFD has to be delivered right before I leave town. I can hear the sirens call of the shop. WHY MUST YOU TAUNT ME!

 

[pontiac428]

Hey, Justin. Nice score with the mill. That's starting a family right. A family of machine tools, that is.
I wanted to welcome another neighbor to the forum, even if you're on the Snort Orchard side.

 

[matthewsx]

Ya know what they say, cheaper ta keep her.

Just make up some shiny do dad she can’t resist for Christmas with the machine. Or better yet, make a big pile of money using it and get her a nice monitor to go with the MacBook.

John

I guess depends on the definition of "New:" to me, new is unused by others & current model, but not necessarily the latest available (like a new Pickup that is last years model:

View attachment 456493

View attachment 456494

You can spend more for more memory and larger displays, but IMHO a second separate display is less added cost and more useful and I am not having any issues running MacDraft Pro on my 2020 M1 MBA with 8 GB (which I bought new in January 2022).

Photographers and videographers are the reason Apple sells high end kit....

Buy MacBook Pro

Discover the MacBook Pro laptop with the M4 family of chips, built for Apple Intelligence. Get credit when you trade in an eligible Mac. Buy now.

www.apple.com

John
(who used to work at Apple in the last millennium)

 

[wachuko]

My children are both into art… animation, game design, virtual reality content creation, etc. The equipment for that is not cheap…Between having to spend on Wacom, Apple, and Nvidia, well, I will never be able to retire…. Not complaining , I love seeing what they create.

You need the same for photography processing…

 

[jmiller]

I have a confession to make. My wife is not actually my wife. Or at least she wasn't. However the excessive chemical fumes emanating from the garage must have gotten to her head because she agreed to marry me the other day. First order of business as a newly wed man: clean the Bridgeport!

We got home about 11:30 last night and I hit the garage around 9 am. Gave the main body a good scrub. The plastic wrap is for some rust removing gel. I've been trying several different cleaning products. HF yellow, purple, green, crud cutter, but the combination I have settled on is this.

The WD40 goes on first to cut the heavy build up, let it soak for a few minutes and then scrub with scotch brite. Once i wipe up the mess i give it a once over with the 505 and rag. So if your doing some heavy cleaning, try this combo. I think you'll be suprised. About $20 for both bottles. My goal for today is to get the knee base cleaned up and reassembled. All my replacement parts as well as the VFD have arrived so time is the only factor in getting this put back together. I hope to be turning good metal into scrap within the next couple of weeks.

 

[GeneT45]

Nice! Before I scrolled down I was going to recommend 'Fast 505' - that stuff is better than anything else I've tried for cleaning a gunked up machine. Congrats on the acquisition (you can decide whether I mean the mill or the wife... ;-)

GsT

 

[jmiller]

Got a good portion of the knee reassembled today. Ran in to one hiccup with the Z axis gib. The gib screw was cammed out when I removed it. Someone had clearly struggled installing it once before. As did I on reassembly. It would thread fine for a while then get almost impossible to turn towards the end. Could not get it in far enough for the way wiper to go on without risking further damage to the screw. So I figured there was an issue in the threads. I decided to chase the theads on the screw with a die. And then chase the hole with a tap.

I measured the screw to be a 5/16 - 24 tpi. I must have gotten that wrong or screwed up the start because I noticed the die was cutting a lot more than I expected. I removed the die and sure enough the threads I had cut didn't look right. I tested the screw and it threaded in fine and seamed to hold and I was able to get it in farther before it stalled. Rather than risk damage to the machine I decided to continue cutting the screw. I cut new threads on the screw down to about 1/2 inch from the head. I figured even if the new threads werent correct the tensing 1/2 inch of original threads would hold. This work out fine and I was able to get the gib screw all the way in securely with room for adjustment. My theory is there are some damaged threads on the machine itself, but 5/16 24 does not seem to be the correct tap. Must be an M8 or I goofed. If anyone knows I'd be interested.

Got a couple parts being derusted tonight, and now I need to clean the one-shot before I can continue.

I also considered doing the split nut mod for the lead scews but decided to just continue with reassembly. Seems easy enough to get the nuts out if I want to do this in the future, but for now I just want to get this thing making chips as soon as possible.